Creativity and madness: The Abnormal Psychology of Creativity

After trying clumsily to conform to what others consider normal for much of my life, I’m beginning to appreciate my own moods and personality.

Are creative people like us ‘abnormal’? In his paper The Abnormal Psychology of Creativity, Steven James Bartlett writes….

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, who was hospitalized several times for psychiatric illness, remarked: “A German once said to me: ‘But if you could rid yourself of many of your troubles.’ To which I replied: ‘They are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and it would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings’ ” (quoted in Stang, 1979, p. 107).

No one chooses severe emotional distress. Yet, clearly some artists, like Munch, have chosen to accept it rather than escape from it. Bartlett shares Kay Redfield Jamison’s take on why they do:

Writing about Munch’s claim, Jamison (1993, p. 241) noted:
This is a common concern. Many artists and writers believe that turmoil, suffering, and extremes in emotional experience are integral not only to the human condition but to their abilities as artists. They fear that psychiatric treatment will transform them into normal, well-adjusted, dampened, and bloodless souls—unable, or unmotivated, to write, paint, or compose.

There is no doubt that negative moods and the power of mania can sometimes make positive contributions to creative thought. But they do not of course of themselves produce it, or every sufferer from abnormal mood intensity and swings would show signs of creativity.

Yet it is typical of anyone who engages in creative work to feel excited, elated, perhaps euphoric or ecstatic, to feel increased self-confidence, the mental efficiency of speed combined with focused concentration, zest, perhaps expansiveness and heightened mental clarity.

In addition, when experiences like these are labeled as ‘symptoms’ of pathology, creative people can develop a skewed sense of self, and a narrowed view of the possibilities of human experience.

And, in a parallel fashion, unhappiness, profound sadness, and grief can no less be the inner partners to creative effort, as novelist Herman Melville, who suffered from severe variations of mood, commented: “The intensest light of reason and revelation combined, can not shed such blazonings upon the deeper truths in man, as will sometimes proceed from his own profoundest gloom. Utter darkness is then his light, and cat-like he distinctly sees all objects through a medium which is mere blindness to common vision” (Melville 1852/1995, p. 242).

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that, compared to “normal” individuals, artists, writers, and creative people in general, are both psychologically “sicker”—that is, they score higher on a wide variety of measures of psychopathology—and psychologically healthier (for example, they show quite elevated scores on measures of self-confidence and ego strength). (Jamison, 1993, p. 97).

Perhaps psychology itself is ‘abnormal’ and will benefit from new paradigms of what it is to be human as creative people embrace their complex psyches.

Note: He may have suffered from bipolar disorder, and according the Wikipedia page on Edvard Munch, “…in the autumn of 1908, Munch’s anxiety, compounded by excessive drinking and brawling, had become acute. As he wrote later, ‘My condition was verging on madness—it was touch and go.’

“Subject to hallucinations and feelings of persecution, he entered the clinic of Dr. Daniel Jacobson… Munch’s stay in hospital stabilized his personality, and after returning to Norway in 1909, his work became more colorful and less pessimistic. His portrait of Professor Jacobson, done in 1909, is one of Munch’s best.”

Donkey: Hey, what’s your problem, Shrek, what you got against the whole world anyway, huh?

Shrek: Look, I’m not the one with the problem, okay? It’s the world that seems to have a problem with me! People take one look at me and go “Aargh! Help! Run! A big stupid ugly ogre!” They judge me before they even know me – that’s why I’m better off alone.

What does the movie Shrek have to do with labeling, the DSM-V and the self-fulfilling prophecy? In this episode I take a close look at the well-known Rosenhan study. This was the study in which “pseudopatients” pretend to hear voices and on the basis of this they get admitted to psychiatric centers. Then they were told to act “normally”. It took an average of 19 days for these “pseudopatients” to be discharged from the hospital and even then they were diagnosed as “schizophrenia in remission”.

Britt asks, “Does this study show that psychiatric diagnoses are not only useless but also possibly harmful?”

15 comments

With great admiration for the beauty of genius, the jury is still out for me insofar as whether it’s madness or the loftiest intelligence from whence comes the moods of thought and mind of creativity.

While I do not see myself as a “creative” medical writer or author, it is not unusual for me to stay up for a few days and nights straight when my juices are flowing to capitalize on them. I see this as rather normal…except when I read the current diagnostic criteria for mental illness. It seems that most highly creative persons suffer from one of the major mood disorders, namely, manic-depressive illness. This speaks to manic episodes–or what I call episodes of “exuberance.”

Hi Douglas,
Great blog, well researched. Having a predominatly creative personality, I used to be concerned that I might go ‘crazy’ like some well known artists. I see madness as an extreme (uncontrolled) creativity. If creativity is about connecting unrelated things, forming new associations and category jumping, then being a ‘mad artist’ is a person where all boundries have dissolved.